Data deduplication often reduces the amount of storage space needed to store backup images by identifying redundant data segments within similar files. For example, a backup and restore technology may capture a backup image of a client device and identify various data segments included in both the backup image and a remote deduplication server. Rather than storing multiple instances of the data segments to the remote deduplication server, the backup and restore technology may configure the backup image to simply reference the data segments already stored on the remote deduplication server. By configuring the backup image to reference the data segments already stored on the remote deduplicated storage, the backup and restore technology may reduce the amount of storage space needed to store the backup image on the remote deduplication server.
Unfortunately, while conventional backup and restore technologies may reduce the amount of storage space needed to store backup images, these backup and restore technologies may still have certain shortcomings and/or inefficiencies. For example, a client device's file system may generate hashes of data segments to perform localized data deduplication on the client device. However, even though the client device's file system has already generated such hashes, a conventional backup and restore technology may generate hashes of the same data segments to perform network-wide data deduplication. By generating hashes of the same data segments as the client device's file system, the conventional backup and restore technology may superfluously consume resources (such as processing power and/or computing time) that could be dedicated to one or more other computing tasks.
As such, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for systems and methods for leveraging data-deduplication capabilities of file systems.